Pro Publica's Guide to the Best Coverage of Newt Gingrich and His Record

This guide was most recently updated on November 30 by Pro Publica.

The basics:

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich got off to a rocky start. He was behind most of the other presidential hopefuls in terms of fundraising, and his campaign staff also quit en masse earlier this year over concerns that Gingrich was not taking campaigning seriously.

But since then, Gingrich has been gaining in the polls — and with his new prominence has come increased scrutiny of his record.

Gingrich is perhaps best-known for his foibles, including his spectacular fall from power in the late 1990s. But he is also a bold ideologue who during his time as speaker in the late 1990s successfully pushed for reducing taxes and scaling back welfare.

Gingrich also holds some views that do not fit the conservative mold. He has partnered with Hillary Clinton to advocate health-care IT legislation, with Al Sharpton and Arne Duncan to promote President Barack Obama's education reforms, and with Nancy Pelosi in an ad stressing the importance of taking action on climate change.

Gingrich angered Republicans by criticizing Paul Ryan's plan to reform Medicare, prompting the American Conservative to accuse him of never really having been a conservative in the first place.

Background and views:

A self-described "ideas man," Gingrich is the author of 23 books. Weekly Standard Senior Editor Andrew Ferguson has a helpful summary of his oeuvre. The takeaways: Gingrich is fond of saying that the United States is at a crossroads and that technology will lead us away from catastrophe. His earlier books are filled with rapid-fire streams of ideas for bettering society, often without details about how to implement them.

"Gingrich's vagueness was always a problem," wrote Ferguson. "But the books show something more: a near-total lack of interest in the political implementation of his grand ideas — a lack of interest, finally, in politics at its most mundane and consequential level."

Gingrich has a Ph.D. in history, and told The New York Times in 2009 that he subscribed to the theory “that certain great leaders must endure a long political exile before returning to power.”

As The New York Times detailed, Gingrich has pushed to reinvent himself in part by putting a new emphasis on faith. He recently told supporters that he believes America is becoming too secular. Gingrich converted to Catholicism after marrying his third wife, Callista, in 2000. In a 2009 Weekly Standard opinion piece co-authored with Callista, Gingrich wrote that religion was key to the triumph of the capitalist West in the Cold War. In his words, "the spiritual nature of man and the freedom to know God were central to defining humanity and decisive in defeating tyranny."

Gingrich has been outspoken about his opposition to same-sex marriage. (An activist glitter-bombed him earlier this year to protest Gingrich's stance.)

He set himself apart from other Republican candidates in November by endorsing what he called a “humane” approach to illegal immigration, which would create a path to legal status for immigrants who have been in the US for decades.

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Pro Publica's Guide to the Best Coverage of Newt Gingrich and His Record

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